on’t die, Mr. Robot grabs that elusive component that so many arcade titles yearn for – “Just one more go….”.

Coming from Bristol based team Infinite State Games this is the PS4 release of a well received PS Vita indie title released in 2014. The premise is simple – stay alive and combo big.

You take control of the titular Mr Robot, a large yellow cube with eyes (think the BBC’s Cbeebies logo characters and you’re almost there) who just wants to stay alive… and maybe munch a little exploding fruit on the way.

You dart around an enclosed play field as waves of enemies start to fill the screen. This would usually be the point you start rotating the second control stick and blast stuff in a dual-stick shooter but here in Don’t Die, Mr. Robot you eat a handily located fruit and a shockwave emanates from it destroying any enemies in its path.

On the surface this is very simple and a brief initial first play could leave you dismissing the game as a little too simple. Yet a few more minutes of play reveals a certain level of depth that you might not have expected given the bright child-friendly visuals. As the randomly generated fruit starts appearing around the play area you start leaving it to accumulate, dodging enemies rather than taking them out. Then you wait for the optimum moment and grab a fruit from a large cluster. Everything explodes in a massive chain reaction and your multiplier soars sky high taking your scoring to a new level. Ah the sweet joy of a score attack game… so pure.

It’s these chains and the skill to dodge the oncoming waves that will keep you picking up Don’t Die, Mr. Robot for short blasts over and over again. There are leaderboards too so you can compare yourself to your friends and other players around the globe in the various game modes (Time Attack, Arcade etc). Coins picked up during play can be traded in for cosmetic changes like different colour characters or replacement main characters. They can also be used to purchase perks to help during main play. Things like a weak or strong shield or increased radius of fruit blasts all help you stay alive that little bit longer.

Added to the main game modes is a Remix mode. This will take certain scenarios and ask you to complete them. Things like collecting no fruit or scoring a certain amount all within certain limits. Each of these tasks will get you a Bronze, Silver, Gold or Platinum award. These then allow you to unlock later challenges in the Remix mode. This, along with the coin/shop system feel like they were destined for a micro-transaction based system that wasn’t implemented.

As fun as Don’t Die, Mr Robot undoubtedly is there are a few issues to take in to consideration. The game, despite it’s bold and colourful look, doesn’t look the best and can get very messy when running and everything is exploding. It’s not offensive or badly done, it just feels a little clunky. The large sprites and the small playing area might have been reasonable on the original PS Vita (although trying it there it still felt crowded with nothing on screen) but it feels like things are just a little too big on a TV. The play area becomes cluttered and simple things are obscured all too often and this leads to frustrating deaths that feel like they were a product of the games design rather than your own mistake.

On that note I have some small gripes about the controls too. They feel ever so slightly sluggish. This, I think, is down to the fact that fine movement isn’t possible. A simple light press in a direction will move you a significant number of pixels rather than a small amount. This means that trying to dodge things that require finesse of movement and pixel perfect timing can get frustrating. They’ve tried to combat this in the game by offering a ‘near miss’ mechanic but it can still get frustrating. The game also continues to run when you press the PS button and swap back to the XMB which is a shame. Most titles would usually just instigate a pause here, but it’s a minor thing and only lead to one death.

Final Thoughts

Don’t Die, Mr. Robot is a solid and enjoyable arcade puzzle score-attack title that has issues. The importance of these really relies on whether you can overcome the way the game controls and the restricted play area.

If you can then there’s a solid and enjoyable game here that will give you heavy doses of “Just one more go!”. It fits neatly as one of those 10-minute quick blast games that you can come back to over and over.

For the asking price of £2.89 (which I think also gives you the PS Vita title as it states Cross-Buy) it’s a no-brainer if you like these style of games.

The product under review was provided by the creator, manufacturer, publisher or their PR representative free of charge and without caveat. Please see our site review policy for more information.

Zeth

Zeth is our EU ninja and Editor in Chief. He's been writing about video games since 2008 when he started on BrutalGamer. He's pretty old and has been a gamer since he played Space Invaders as a young boy in the 80's. His genre tastes lean towards platformers, point-and-click adventure, action-adventure and shooters but he'll turn his hand to anything.

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